Blood In, Blood Out
by Mr. Dynasty
Summary: Team Rocket's most storied enforcer rejoins the free world, to the chagrin of some within the hierarchy of the Team. When egos clash, will Miyamoto's new partner prove to be her biggest windfall, or greatest rival for the precarious position of favor she holds with the Madame Boss? Language/Violence. Slightly AU. Spin-off of PKMN2K10.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Pokemon.

**A/N: **So, after some thought and encouragement from a highly respected peer, I decided to go ahead and kick this off. As mentioned in the summary, this is set in the same universe as my other fic, but you don't really have to read it to follow along with this story. It's notably a shorter format than PKMN2K10, so it's possible that this might be updated a bit more frequently. We'll just have to see how that goes.

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**Blood In, Blood Out**

**Chapter 1**

_"How Little You Know"_

Miyamoto sat as demurely as one could in a cheap vinyl bench-seat. The seedy place Ariana had asked to meet with her was not at all in line with the simple elegance that both women typically tried to exude, but for some conversations, dive bars were just more appropriate.

Nobody inside the pub looked more than once at their flash or their colors. It was easy to spot them for what they were, and that was all the more that anyone needed to know in Viridian City. When you were a Rocket, people did not ask questions, no matter how out of place you might've seemed. It was just an assumed thing. A VIP pass to anywhere one might've chosen to go in this town. They were a sort of reviled royalty, in that way.

Still, it was an unusual thing for a Rocket to drink here. Most of them usually took their pleasure in the same place where they did most of their business. The old dance-club on the northeast side that had been called several equally flashy and contrite names before it had gone out of business, and fallen well out of fashion. Now they just called it the HQ, though there were many more colorful references made to it by those other than themselves, she was sure.

Still, it served their pleasures well enough. Nobody there begrudged them a little off-duty R&R. There was always plenty of booze on hand, in variety and volume, certainly, and if what you were coming out for were some of the more illicit things you could find for yourself in a place like this, there were plenty of those things to be had too, if you asked around amongst the right brothers and sisters. Hell, most of the fully fledged rockets practically lived there. Some actually did, in fact.

For all but the most sociable and outgoing Rockets, a fuck or a bump was easier had amongst one's own. A drink, certainly so. To have asked her out here, meant this conversation was not for general consumption. They were here so the Admin could speak her mind without anyone overhearing.

But It wasn't just the location of this conversation that was so troublesome, to Miyamoto. It also had to do with the fact that Ariana was already sighing over the remnants of her sixth sherry, which foretold of a type of drunkenness that the Agent had never seen Ariana reduced to before.

For her own part, Miyamoto nursed absently at a pale draught beer, biding her time beneath the muted red incandescent light until she could be permitted to leave. This was a type of trouble she did not need. Shit getting stirred up amongst Admins was a whole level of power-play that she could not afford at the moment, with her reputation on the mend.

There had been a time when the only thing separating her from such a position was the lack of available positions. Now, after a close brush with the deeper intrigues, she was well contented to be her own sort of big fish in a small pond. She was eager to put this conversation behind her, regardless of it's actual content. Of course, you couldn't just come right out and say such a thing to a person who was essentially the Boss' right hand. She would just have to bide.

Still, as if sensing her invited guest's dismay, Ariana pointed two fingers that kicked up turbulence in the thick strata cigarette smoke that layered the air. She didn't slur, but there was a somewhat loping quality to her voice that was nearly as good by comparison. When someone like Ariana displayed even the most remote lack of discretion, it was a marked occasion. The Admin was normally so stiff she could make a corpse with rigor mortis look like he was having a relaxing evening.

"Cut the shit, alright? I know you're not thrilled to be here, but there's some things you gotta hear about the person you're going to meet tomorrow," Ariana practically spat, her eyes flashing a fair amount of freshly unbridled contempt. It was no real secret that Ariana didn't care for those of them that did the really dirty jobs. She sat up in the rarefied air, so that was to be expected, after all. "And you should be prepared for what meeting that person is going to mean for you."

If that's what she was concerned about, then this conversation would be much shorter than Miyamoto had expected, , the Agent sat back, and laid folded gloved hands over crossed legs. "I have no reason to be worried."

"I wouldn't be so sure." Ariana cautioned, some of the civility returning to her voice. "_She's_ getting out of prison_ tomorrow_. She did years of hard time for the Team, no complaints." Here she flicked her fingers again, tone once more growing accusatory. "_You_ on the other hand, you're coming off a major setback. The Pallet expansion was supposed to oversee all our trafficking from Cinnabar, collect shipments off the coast under cover of darkness and distribute to rural suppliers. Now that's all just a pipe-dream because nobody can budge a fucking inch in Pallet anymore and the Team is eating the loss on your behalf."

Miyamoto frowned, but only slightly. The sting of the issue was months gone. She was now just more annoyed at hearing the story retold and again having to explain it. It made her feel like a floor-boss having to explain why a certain course of action was actually positive, when all upper-management could see was a downturn on a line graph that they knew little to nothing practical about. "It's wasn't a loss. We rooted out a traitor to the team and finished her for good. As far as I'm concerned, the whole venture going up in smoke ten times over is worth that."

Ariana nodded gravely, and sipped the last dregs of her drink, before waving it in the air impatiently, until she'd caught the barkeeps attention from across the room. "And more or less that's how the Boss sees it too, so that's fine. But how does it look from _her_ perspective?"

There never seemed to be any proper names spent at their subject's expense, where Ariana was concerned. Some old beef? Miyamoto could only wonder.

"Doesn't matter." The Agent protested, concealing her bemusement. "I don't intend to start an opinion poll. She'll fall in step with me one way or another." Miyamoto sat one hand on the table and expanded the fingers before clenching it tightly, knuckles down against the scarred wood. There was an audible sound of muscle and bone even past that of creaking leather. "If I have to flex a little to get her there, it doesn't concern me."

Ariana sighed. She knew that Miyamoto was cut from a different stock. Unlike Ariana, who had been a young lieutenant close to the Boss before she'd inherited the gang from her father, Miyamoto had not always lived a life in the upper crusts of criminal luxury and fraternity.

She'd fended for herself most of her life, and cut a living in the gutters where kids her age had been dying of starvation and sickness, long before she'd worn the colors. Now well-naturalized, Miyamoto had been born a child of distant Castelia, where half a generation had fallen into poverty and homelessness after the global economic crisis of the previous decade.

It was from that mire that the Boss had elevated her, putting to use a vast array of unsavory talents, not the least of which was a considerable disregard for human life. Miyamoto was a hard woman, and her path through life had made her that way.

But hard women were difficult to reason with, at times for much the same reasons.. Ariana had risen high within the hierarchy of the team by showing her value to a girl that had outgrown her friendship and become a powerful leader, but the Admin had never been afraid to bow out to her betters when faced with the sorts of problems that Miyamoto was typically brought in to solve.

So far as Ariana was concerned, there were two types of strength at it's most basic level: that which you could apply to a given problem on your own, and that which you could convince others to apply at your behest. She was far more invested in the latter, not to mention more confident in her ability to levy it.

"Miyamoto," Ariana began, waving the violent gesture away without the slightest hint of interest. "That woman is not the type you want to become closely involved with. In any capacity."

"What do you mean?" Miyamoto asked, her hands returning to her lap where she left them folded plainly. "Everyone says she was the best before..."

The Rocket Agent did not chortle, keeping her mouth closed respectfully. Her eyes however, lit with a macabre satisfaction. "Before they put her on the inside."

"Before _you_ came around, you mean," Ariana countered, with a scolding tone in her voice. A good sense of professional snottiness was not a foreign concept to the Admin, however. Rockets were the type that put notches in their belts, after all, even her.

Miyamoto shrugged in a way that was certainly meant to seem noncommittal to the casual observer, but was as good as acquiescence in truth. "I mean to say that she was well-respected and close to the Boss, by every account I've heard."

Ariana nodded, as a new drink was set in front of her. "That much is true, though in just what way, is a matter of perspective."

Miyamoto exhaled over the top of her beer, but humored the Rocket Admin, nonetheless. "Oh?"

"Utility of a sort does not make something utilitarian in general," Ariana said blithely. "You understand?"

Miyamoto nodded, but shrugged, as if to say she understood conceptually, but didn't follow the line of logic. "I suppose so."

"Sharpedos have big mouths, but you wouldn't take a _blowjob_ from one." Ariana said, eyebrows flattened as she hammered out her point in a blunt and rude way that she knew Miyamoto would understand.

Now it was Miyamoto who scowled. "You think she's a liability?"

"No, not so much that as..." Here, the Admin paused and changed her mind. It was best that she didn't say more than was prudent. "Let's just say..."

It was clear that Ariana was dancing around the subject, which made Miyamoto want to get up and leave all the more. She shifted slightly, prompting the Admin to get on with it.

"Well, take you for example. The Boss likes you because you're a mean little cuss with no qualms whatsoever about getting nasty business done right," Ariana explained. "You're smart and trustworthy, sure, and that's why she doesn't keep you on a tight leash but the main thing is that you're cold-blooded and the Boss knows she can count on you when she can't count on anyone else, person or Pokemon."

Miyamoto licked her teeth behind her lips, but didn't say anything. That sort of self-satisfied expression really pushed the Admin's buttons. "Don't try to look cute, bitch. You know I'm right."

Miyamoto finally betrayed a bit of a laugh, though she did not shift in her seat. She made a noise that was as much affirmation as Ariana was likely to get.

The Admin took another big gulp of her sherry, tamping down her resolve. "Well, _she_ was like that too. She was the first person the Boss recruited who could be totally and completely counted on that way."

"So we're both willing to spill blood?"

"More like you're both a special sort of psychotic that the Boss finds tractable enough for her liking," Ariana cautioned. "Let's just say I have my doubts that this town is big enough for the both of you."

Miyamoto did not acknowledge the slight to her person with anything more than a smirk. She'd punched people's teeth into their throats for less disrespect than that, but she'd let it slide on principle. Ariana outranked her, even if she was a paper-pusher. Plus, she was flat-on-her-ass drunk. Miyamoto could excuse a bit of misjudgment. She swallowed the rebuke, and let fly the dismissal instead.

"Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. Either way I think I'll be fine," The younger woman said, leaving her beer unfinished as she moved to stand.

Ariana snatched the Agent's arm with alarming quickness, overturning the half-full glass of sherry with the sharp motion and sparing it not a bit of concern. The Admin's grip was hard and urgent,and though it would have been nothing for Miyamoto to wrench free, the haunted look that the Admin favored her with held her in place.

"Before you decide that there's nothing to concern yourself with, let me tell you a story first," She began, voice quite grave. "I've wanted to get this off my chest for years now, and somebody needs to hear it. It may as well be you." It was an old story. A dark story. One that she was hoping to forget after tonight, if at all possible.

In the past fifteen years, there had been more killing and bloodshed than in the rest of the gangs history combined, and Ariana had been there to see it all. She was thirty-nine going on forty now, and she carried the memory of many monstrous things that had shaped the team into what it was today.

Before the Madame Boss had taken over, there had been a very long and bloodless regime, where much of the conduct that was commonplace today would've been unheard of. She was old enough to remember some of that too. It had been a simpler time back then, before the expansion and the extended, merciless battles over turf. She had never, and would never speak that sort of criticism aloud, though.

This was the Boss' Team, and it's course was hers to decide. The bloodletting was on its waning phase, Arceus-willing, and she hoped that in just a few years more they might be able to put this turbulent period behind them. From there, she could move the team into mostly-legitimized profits, but until then, she served whatever ends she was put to, compliantly.

Still, the point where this had all began a decade and a half ago, stuck with her so vividly that it still came to her in nightmares every so often. The way she saw it, seniority and good service had earned her this one small breach of confidence.

Miyamoto sat back down, and as the Admin blotted up the spilled contents of her glass with a handful of napkins from a nearby dispenser, she slowly told her story about the woman in question.

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**A/N:** Chapter two will be along shortly. Thanks for reading.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Pokemon.

**A/N: **Heavy content coming up. Brace yourself.

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**Blood In, Blood Out**

**Chapter 2**

_"A Little Girl's Grudge"_

The house was an isolated inferno. A great, hellish blaze amidst the otherwise immaculate grounds of the estate, spewing meter-long gouts of flame and great rushes of ember and smoke from it's windows like the vents on an over-stoked coal boiler.

A ninety degree turn and it was all blue skies and green grasses, for hundreds of yards, framed in only by the infinity pool that played itself against the horizon line of the cape, and the ivy-covered greenhouse, that sat with dignity on the west end of the compound. When you looked that way, there was only just the smell of charred fibreglass and accelerant-soaked stucco to suggest something was amiss. Thick black smoke was only now beginning to choke out the sunlight that cast down from over the sea to the east, leaving all else as if it were part of another, more pristine world.

Ariana looked at the clock on the dash, as she pulled to a stop. It was 10:14 AM. Still mid-morning. Hardly anything went so wrong in mid-morning. She was in the business of night-time disasters. The incitement or containment of such disasters on behalf of the Team being her chief responsibility, she considered mid morning a time for the dust to settle. Yet, here they were, looking at what was a hell of a beginning to someone's very bad day.

Still, she stepped out of the car and popped the umbrella, as she pulled open the rear door of the sedan, not forgetting her due diligence. The Madame Boss did not abide sunlight, after all, however palled it might've been. Like her, the Boss was primarily concerned with nocturnal ventures, and so she hurried to provide conditions the Madame Boss was more accustomed to.

Ariana was many things for the team, and enjoyed a high standing within it's ranks, newly risen. All the same, Ariana followed the sleekly dressed young woman from the vehicle, the black parasol never leaving her hand as she played custodian to the extension of shade the Madam Boss enjoyed wherever she went, indoors or out. She understood that when you were with the Madame Boss, you were whatever she damn well desired until she no longer desired it, regardless of what your job title was, so umbrella-carrier she would be.

They drew much closer to the house-fire than Ariana might've liked, but she said nothing. Her role was to facilitate the Boss just now, not dictate where she went. She felt the heat of the blaze permeate her clothing, and warm the skin on her face uncomfortably, and she was sure that the Madame Boss felt it too, though the woman was far too poised and intense to let it show.

The gigantic house crackled and roared with the anger of a dying Heatran, parts of it beginning to buckle loudly with the snapping of ancestral timbers laid down with the great manse's construction.

"Do you know who's house this is?" The Madame Boss asked.

"Everybody knows who's house this is," Ariana answered. "They're the richest family in Cerulean City."

The Madame Boss nodded her accord and they stood there for what seemed like ages, just watching, but for what, Ariana didn't know.

"Should we be here?" The young admin cautioned after a while. It seemed like the police, or at the least the fire department might come roaring up the winding accessway that was the only means of entering or leaving the property via road.

Seeming not to hear the concern in her voice, The Madame Boss only posed a question of her own. A sharp one. "Do you know what is killing the Team?"

"Madame?" Ariana blurted, confused.

The boss was silent for a time, not moving or speaking, but then turned slightly, catching Ariana in a hard-eyed gaze. "We're fighting a war of attrition. Team Magma. Team Aqua. They're pushing us just the same as we're pushing them. Holding us back in every market we stick our noses in. If it isn't one, it's the other. We're fighting a war out here on the streets, but we're not winning it, Ariana. I asked you why."

She found it hard to respond. "W-well, because..." Ariana cleared her throat. "We're not able to oust the other teams because the League keeps supplying them with stronger Pokemon."

The Madame Boss looked away, focusing again on the burning manse. "That's not an answer. They supply _us_ as well. Not to mention the Police."

Ariana swallowed at the rebuke, trying not to let the Boss see that she was stymied. "T-that's just it. They're perpetuating this turf-war. The League doesn't want one team to dominate Kanto, and they don't want the authority gaining too much traction, either. It's not good for them." She offered, beginning to draw up some traction. She adjusted her sweating hand on the handle of the parasol. "This way they keep us all weak. They want to diminish us in the eyes of everyone, to enhance their own legitimacy."

The Madame Boss nodded very slowly. This had been a long, hard year for the team. So many fights lost. So much wasted in the pursuit of so little, since the first big push. It was more than the acrid smell of smoldering shingles that made her want to cough. "That's a reason, I'll grant you. What I really want, however, is a solution. We can't fight the League. But how do we push the other teams out of Kanto?"

Ariana switched the umbrella into her other hand, and tried not to look as dumbfounded as she felt. She grasped at the first straw that came to mind. "We need stronger Pokemon."

The Madame Boss shook her head. "No. The League has a monopoly on strong Pokemon by design. If we procure stronger Pokemon, then so will Aqua and Magma. What we need is something different."

Ariana, at a loss, shook her head this time. "What, then?"

The fire glinted in the Madame Boss' eyes so brightly for a moment, that Ariana might've imagined that the blaze ahead was the true reflection, and that the heat and light itself actually emanated from those two dark eyes. "It starts with grudges."

Ariana leaned in a bit, thinking she'd misheard, but then the Boss went on. "We have to stop fighting their Pokemon. We need to start fighting their people. For this struggle to ever be over, we need people willing to do the ugly things. More than that, we need people willing to take this farther than just a fight. Do you understand?"

The young admin might've answered, had it not been for what happened next. Something emerged from that fire. Something truly gruesome and wrong. The sight of it stole the words from her throat.

It was so distant at first, that she'd thought maybe that it was a Pokemon of some sort that she'd never seen before, twisting and many-legged. Perhaps a fire type, she imagined, which would've explained the state of the house, but that was not the case at all.

Instead, it was two somethings-someones, more particular. One, burned and bloodied, being dragged by another, who was so shocking in appearance that Ariana nearly gasped aloud. They scuffled at the door, the relatively small size of one being balanced by the grievous wounds of the other, bringing the conflict to a standstill. The smaller seemed to win after the extended struggle, though they emerged no less battered for their efforts in the apparently mortal conflict.

When the struggle subsided, the lesser form stooped, pulling the other down burning the skeleton of a staircase by a handful of still smoking hair. The hair was red and curly and lead to a face that would've been unrecognizable but for the context clues that surrounded it.

The face, though badly burned and distorted by pain, when paired with the body which accompanied it and taken as a whole with the scene of devastation around them, simply could not belong to anyone else. It was a woman Ariana handily recognized.

Rose's elegance and demeanor was her trademark in the upper crusts of society, both inside the League and in the public eye, and those were now nowhere to be found, but it would've been harder not to believe that this twisted wreck of humanity was the heiress to the Cerulean family fortune, with all the consequential evidence piling up around her.

The smaller of the two people was a little harder to place, in Ariana's mind. She felt as though she had seen her before, but...

It hit her mind like an electrical surge. "_Arceus_, is that her daughter? Justicia? I thought she was sick. Some childhood leukemia thing."

The Madame Boss nodded. "A cover evidently. This is certainly not something the family wanted everyone to see." The prodigal daughter of this impressive house was a sight to behold, truly, though Ariana wished she was seeing less of it.

"_Shit,_" the admin commented, could understand why that was something you'd want to keep under wraps.

The swollen, pregnant belly looked horrifically out of place on a girl so young, like some third world distention of the gut. Girls were getting knocked up earlier and earlier these days, but she was almost impossibly young. At her best guess, Ariana would've said that Justicia was 10, but that was just a guess. She was certainly no older than that, but something had roiled in her gut when her first instinct had prompted her toward an age shy of that number.

The sickening feeling did not lessen as the scene played out

She was dragging her mother onto the front lawn, with the obvious intention of beating her; If not to death, than it was hard to tell where. When they had cleared the circular driveway and the girl felt like she had gone far enough Justicia dropped her mother and kicked at her viciously until she lost her balance. When she righted herself again, it was only so she could dash herself to the ground without regard for her pregnancy, and fling her little fists into the hard, high cheek-bones of her mother again and again.

A child so small didn't have the power to inflict lasting damage, but she was putting down a solid case against the fact. When punches did ultimately fail her, the girl turned to clawing and scratching and gouging that her mother, wounded as she was, could not defend against.

Ariana took a step forward to stop the sickening display, but the Madame Boss held her fast by a hooked elbow. "Let it be."

Justicia's voice, they tiny voice of a child, wailed shrill and high, as she scraped at her mother's once strikingly beautiful face, the blood and the skin accumulating beneath her nails. "You let this happen! You let him do this to me!"

Oblivious to the onlookers, the woman wailed back. "I didn't know! I swear I didn't know!"

"Liar! Liar, Liar, Lia-a-ar!" Justicia screamed, "You knew! I know you knew! You knew about it and you didn't do anything! You didn't! Daddy didn't! You both knew!"

"No! That's not true! Your grandpa was a very sick man! If I had known, even before your Daddy died, I would have sent him away! Please believe me, sweetheart! I would never have let him touch you if I had known-"

"No! No! You just didn't want to do anything until grandpa died and gave everything to you! The Madame told me so! She told me the truth!" Justicia pointed at the woman in black who'd come to observe on the lawn. "She said you were too afraid to say anything, before he gave you the house and the money! You knew, but you just let it happen, because you didn't want to lose everything! You wouldn't cross him until you had everything!"

Ariana felt her eyes widen at the greater scandal alluded to in the byplay. She hazarded a glance and the Madame Boss, who didn't so much as smirk at the mention of her title. Instead, the Boss stepped very slowly and severely from beneath the parasol, approaching the scene. Ariana made to follow, but was gestured away, silently.

"Justicia, no. I-I promise!" Rose gasped, blood leaking from a wicked gash under one swollen eye. "Darling, I would never, _ever _just allow that happen!"

The Madame Boss spoke, and when the Madame Boss spoke, it seemed like even the burning wreckage of the estate piped down to listen. The Madame boss did not offer condemnation to the mother, but rather, added fuel to the conflagration in the young girls heart, whipping it into the frenzy that surely rivaled the fires that consumed the manse beyond.

"She whored you out to her own father. She let that disgusting old man fill you with his seed, so that she could line her own pockets, and protect her own interests. You were just a pawn to her." She hissed at the young girl in a stage whisper, loud enough for all to hear.

"I didn't know!" Rose protested, arms extended in supplication.

"She did know. How could she not know? She grew up with your grandfather, remember. She knew good and well that your grandfather was an incestuous pedophile and a rapist fiend. And do you want to know _how_ she knew?" the Rocket Boss teased, theatrically.

"No, stop it!" Rose wailed, voice cinched tight by culminated fear and anxiety.

The tall woman knelt down so that she was even with young Justicia, speaking into her ear. "She knew because he did the same to her as he did to you. How do you think _you_ were born?" Justicia's eyes flew wide with fresh hatred and sorrow at these words.

The Madame Boss did not stop there, however. She stoked the fire, further. "The man you think was your _father_ was just a stand-in to protect the dignity of your family. He was wimp and a worm, and a groom of convenience to take credit for the fruit of the atrocious lusts of your grandfather. Just a shield for your mother to hide behind."

"Darling. Justicia, I-" Rose began, pitifully but was interrupted sharply.

"She played the part of concubine for so long that she must've been happy to see you take over for her! I imagine that she'd have let him breed you until your ovaries caved in, if I hadn't made sure he met with an accident for you."

There was a command that lay unspoken in the air. The Madame Boss had made good on her end of the bargain. She expected young Justicia to make good on hers. The Boss laid a hand on the young girl's shoulder and while she did not offer a weapon, or advice on how best to perform the task, when she pointed at the fallen disgrace of a woman before them, what she desired was clear.

"Show me that you'll get what you deserve," The Boss urged. "I can't take someone with me who won't stick up for themselves."

Justicia fell across her mother in a rush, wrapping her hands around Rose's throat. She squeezed tight, her thumbnails opening puncture wounds that oozed down her mother's pale neck. For her part, the heiress put up as much resistance as she could, but there was no stopping an insane fury like the one the Madame Boss had stoked in the little girl. Her daughter choked and strangled, and ignored those meager attempts to buck her off, or shove her away.

Justicia's face was purple and distorted with emotions of all kinds. Her mouth clenched in an open grimace, curses and spit trickling out as she gnashed the air between. Her eyes gushed under a knit and twisted brow, as she choked the life out of the very same person who had given life to her.

"Just-just." He mother gagged, unable to fully enunciate her daughter's name. "Ple... I love...you."

The girl screamed, lung-collapsing in length and throat-scouring in harshness. She pulled her mother toward her by the neck, her scream dying to a long shrill warble, that ended in a gasping, miserable inhale. "Stop LYING!" She croaked, slamming her mother back down into the ground with everything that her adolescent body could muster.

Rose swooned from the blow, as her skull thudded against the hard-packed earth. Her bluing lips puckered for air that would not come, and her eyes rolled slowly upward. Her limp hands trembled spasmodically and then fell into the thick grass of the grounds. The gurgling sound in her throat died, and then, staring vapidly at a sky that was half swirling black and half yawning blue, so did she.

When the deed was done, the Madame Boss stood, took off her jacket. and cast it down across the young girl who had just committed matricide. Justicia rocked back on her haunches in a low crouch, and collected the garment against herself, shielding herself from the brisk morning with everything at her disposal. She did not stand, but neither did she collapse in on herself.

She seemed to just look at it all, take it in for what it was worth. She looked at her mother who lay still on the lawn, and at the burning house that would shortly make ashes out of everything she'd ever known, and if she saw anything there that saddened her, it did not show.

In fact, more than anything else, Justicia seemed a person wholly satisfied by what she had done.

Ariana had come to understand what the Boss had meant, during the long car-ride home.

The trained Pokemon that Team Rocket used rarely pushed their fights between one another to anything that might be described as lethal, since that was how they were trained. Even those rare few that would, would almost never harm a human in more than a superficial way, much less kill one.

As for people, the Rockets were a grisly bunch, and any of them might one day find themselves a killer if the fights continued to escalate, but how many of them could do it in cold blood? How many of them could work up the gumption to end another human being, without being pushed to the brink, first? She wagered there were not many. She didn't think she could, at least.

She looked at the little girl curled up in the back seat, in the rear-view mirror.

The team needed people who could and would commit murder. And by the Madame Boss' reckoning, if they couldn't find them, they would have to make them. Whether what the Boss had said of Justicia's mother was true or false, the process had begun in just the manner she'd promised.

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**A/N: **And with that, lets consider this bad boy kicked off, shall we?


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Pokemon.

**A/N: **A little bit lighter of a chapter this time! Enjoy.

* * *

**Blood In, Blood Out**

**Chapter 3**

_"Just Another Regular"_

Pierce was driving the car. He always drove the car. A consummate get-away man, Pierce sat like a racer even during this casual drive, one leg an extension of the accelerator, the other poised to mash on the breaks at the slightest provocation.

Pierce had never spoken much, just as he didn't now.

The man beside him however, eyes on fire with excitement, told his story without any gaps for air. Petrel sat with one knee in the leather seat, gesticulating wildly over the console at their youngest member who only seemed to care in the most vague sense about his story. "-you should have fuckin' seen it bro, six Magma heavies loaded for bare went in there, and didn't a fuckin' one of them come out. Maybe five minutes later she just comes strolling out of that warehouse, like nothing even happened."

Petrel made an expression that was a mask of emotionless calm, a rarity on his face, and wiped fingertips over his visage to emphasize this point. "Stone cold, bro. Stone cold. Shit was cray-cray, for real."

"There's a reason ol' girl wore a shield back in the day, Petrel," Tyson, awkwardly crammed between them in the back, in spite of the fact that he was the largest, commented airily. Petrel, almost universally disliked for the same enthusiasm he now exhibited, shared the front with Pierce only because Pierce wanted him in constant back-handing distance while confined to a vehicle with him.

Petrel had been assigned to him as his partner. It was not a particularly civil union, but they managed it without killing one another since all Rockets at the Agent level were expected to work in pairs. Petrel had been Justicia's partner before she'd been locked up, Miyamoto knew. Needing a new partner, the Boss had given him this one. For Pierce, this day could not have come soon enough.

Petrel nodded with a mixture of solemnity and thrill at Tyson's point but Archer quirked a brow. "Shield? You mean like the metal thing?" the young agent asked incredulously, motioning as though he were holding such device.

Everyone in the car let out a genuine hiss of irritation, realizing that Archer had spent the last three months either wondering why some Rockets wore their letter inside a shield-shaped patch on their breasts or shoulders, while others wore theirs open on their backs or chests or lapels-"al fresco" as it was called-or else had never noticed the difference.

Petrel, quick and eager to irritate, answered the implied question in typical Rocket fashion; with an insult. "Damn, bro. Are you sure you're allowed to wear that shit?" Petrel pointed at Archer's dress jumper, white with red Rocket "R" emblazoned on the left lapel, a motif played out in all their clothing to one variation or another. "You know only full Agents get to wear those, right? Yo, get this motherfucker a cardigan, or somethin'."

"Fuck you, Pet," Archer barked, but was elbowed by the immense man next to him.

"Cool it." Tyson urged, though he was sympathetic. Archer had been a Grunt for nearly three years, which was thrice the normal required time before you were allowed to wear the white flash, and be considered a fully fledged agent

Archer had been assigned to Tyson, which was a solid match, truth be told. Tyson was a veteran who could teach the well-educated but inexperienced novice all that he needed to know to survive out here in the real world. With just a nudge from Tyson, the younger Rocket fell wisely silent

Pierce, for his own form of tutelage took his right hand off of the wheel to smack Petrel so hard that his face hit the head-rest and bounced back into the teaching hand, giving him a freebie for his educational efforts. Petrel, in typical form, just ignored the blow, and kept right on rolling. "Seriously, three years and you don't even know what the shield means? The fuck did your sponsor even teach you?"

Archer didn't answer, at first, but it was mostly because he'd had enough jokes about Ariana sexing him into the Team, rather than him actually earning his emblem with hard work and effort. Everyone in the car, evidently well aware of this rumor, said nothing and pretended to be inconspicuous.

Finally, though, he seethed enough to open his mouth. "She taught me about making paper. Real paper, bitch. Something you don't know shit about, so shut your punk-ass mouth before I fuck it shut _for_ you."

"Ah, so there's some bite left, huh? Ariana let you keep some of your teeth after all, huh? Figured she'd have busted all those motherfuckers out, so you could tongue-punch a little deeper into her pussy, really get down to the good stuff."

"'Ay, 'ay, 'ay. I said cool it!" Tyson barked, holding Archer back in his seat with an extended arm, when he surged forward.

"How do you even know what a pussy is, Pet?" Pierce asked, his monotone voice and acerbic nature making the question sound practically genuine.

"I know your mom's got one. I had to roll her fat ass in powdered sugar first and look for the wet spot, to find the motherfucker, but it was there, bro. She taught me all about that shit. " Petrel said, thumbing his goatee and popping both eyebrows obnoxiously. If this was not enough, he loaded the innuendo further by pumping his hips gratuitously.

Pierce let fly again, missed when Petrel ducked sharply, but then sucker-punched his foul-mouthed partner in the solar plexus when he sat there smirking for a beat, thinking he'd successfully dodged physical retribution. The younger Rocket let out a sound that sounded like more than a cough, but slightly less than a wretch. A final warning-shot evidently, since he wasn't hunched over weeping.

"You get the shield for doing dirty shit on behalf the Team," Tyson explained, with a gauging look at the newest member, as Petrel wheezed.

Petrel, recovering slightly, stole back the attention. "We _all _do dirty shit on behalf of the Team, Ty, shit. Team Rocket isn't a social club. We steal Pokemon, racketeer, deal in illegal supplements, all that shit. You get the shield for being a truly _grimy _motherfucker," he managed, though his voice

Pierce looked up in the rear-view mirror, at the cars sole occupant bearing such a device. Slowly but surely, everyone else's gaze fell on her as well.

Miyamoto looked back at them all, and shifted, crossing one leg over the other as best she could, crammed in beside Tyson. "Ch'yeah, grimy," she answered in a chuckle. "I guess so."

Archer, perhaps the bravest or the most ignorant, asked her the question that had surely been on his mind since she'd transferred in from the collapsed Pallet chapter. "How'd you get yours?"

She answered with silence and furrowed brow, as if the question was beneath her notice, and everyone marveled at the chilling simplicity of it.

Except Petrel.

"Yeah, how did it go down?" Petrel asked, wide-eyed and full of awe, which promptly earned him another smack from Pierce. This one was only half-hearted, because Pierce, like everyone else, was practically tilted sideways to hear her answer.

"With a heavy thud," Miyamoto offered, and shrugged. The memory was old and tired, and didn't leave her breathless anymore, but she didn't care to retell it. Once, she'd seen the spilled guts of that Aqua Admin under her eyelids when she shut them. Now, she was just tired of trying to make the story worth hearing.

Now, she hardly thought about it as more than a bizarre, lucid moment in her life, where she'd stood clutching the slick, hot blade in her gloved fingers, slowly backing away from the desperate grasps of her mark, watching him crash to the floor cradling an armful of his intestines because he hoped his life depended on it, and listening to him choke and sob when he realized how wrong he was. She'd had no real part in it other than that. She'd just stood and watched the rest of the bitter cursing and misery run its course to the end.

It seemed rather pointless in a way. She hadn't even known his name, until a few days later. Amber. A fucking _girl's_ name. Offing that Aqua Admin had boosted her reputation within the Team immensely, but it definitely diminished the act in her own eyes, every time she had to look back and remember that the guy had such a bitch name.

She'd spilled blood for the Team more than once since, and the first time had been relatively easy by comparison to some of the others. Team-sanctioned hits were simple that way. Just a face, with nothing attached to it.

You would always remember that face, sure, immortalized as it was in the flash of fear and animalistic anger and sadness that preceded the end. That, and everything else about that moment: where you were standing, what you could hear, what the inside of your mouth tasted like, the smell of blood like a wet handful of loose change.

You would remember the adrenaline so strong and so hot that it felt like your heart was pumping lemon juice, and your scalp was on fire. You would remember the tension that made your arms feel like they would explode if you didn't move them while it cast your legs in concrete and nailed your feet to the floor.

All that and more would be captured in the minds eye with perfect clarity, but there was never anything tied to it on an emotional level. At least, there never had been for her. Not when it was for the team. The act itself became autonomous and empty. It was simple murder. No sadness. No grief. No anger, really. Maybe some detached guilt and a little more emptiness to add to all the rest, but that was it. It was nothing personal. Just someone who had to die. Garbage to be taken out.

It was when the shit got personal that things were messy. When it hit close to home, that wasn't murder anymore. That was _killing_, and there was a difference between a murder and a _killing_.

She'd done both, and she could safely say that it was always worse when it meant something. When the person you were putting in the dirt had hurt you, or wronged you, or maybe even meant something to you, and the time came when you really just had to fucking _kill _them to get right again, it shook the foundations, no matter who you were.

You just had to cut and stab and pop off and see what poured out on the floor from all the holes you made. That was when the demons came out and pieces of you started spinning off from the main body like a centrifuge. When it went down that way, you were killing off fractions of _yourself_ as much as your intended victim, because to keep yourself whole you had to kill them, _and _the part of you that had gotten so bent out of shape about it.

Murder was simple. Easy. At times, she felt as though she could _murder_ every second of every day, for the rest of her life if she had to, but she only had just a few more _killings_ left in her before she was tanked. Killing was hard on the body and the mind.

"When you get a shield of your own, we can talk about it, Petrel. Till then, drop it." she expanded, not to add to the mystery but rather, to cut it off at the knees.

She mostly put up with Petrel's constant obnoxiousness because as a Rocket, he was good at what he did. That, and she found, in spite of her better judgement, Petrel's sneers and snark got her motor running in the worst sort of way. Still, she shot him a look that said in no uncertain terms that she would wrench his cock off and feed it to him in bite-sized portions if he didn't button up.

"Sorry." Tyson offered her with a dismissive grunt on behalf of the Viridian regulars. "Not enough tact to go around, among us."

The act reminded her that she was still mostly an outsider in the Viridian regulars. She'd not been assigned a new partner yet, and she was still an odd man out where the regulars of Team Rocket's home chapter was concerned.

"_Hey_," Petrel began with a grump, interrupting her thoughts. He thumbed his chest rapidly, but his grin was a sarcastic one. "I'm not tactless. I have a _condition_."

Miyamoto rolled her eyes, Pierce sighed, Tyson smirked, and Archer subtly nodded to himself as he frowned and looked out the window, as if that explained everything.

They hung a left off of Route 2 onto Old Viridian highway toward the prison.

Viridian Municipal Penitentiary was a great slab of concrete braced by arches of weathered steel that jutted painfully from the roadside like a rusted collection of staples blown up a thousand times. Fences in triplicate lined it's demarcation in the empty expanse of wilderness the highway cut through, high and lined with razor-wire enclosing all the dusty exercise yards and parking lots of austere white vans and prison buses. Their wise-assing stopped cold as the sight of it loomed closer.

Pierce drove into the side lot which was open for the purposes of releases and visitation in an overtly casual way. He parked the sedan smoothly, but he didn't seem all that willing to get out, so in that regard at least he did seem less than super-human. Or at least no more so than the rest of them.

Miyamoto had never been on the inside, but Viridian Municipal was as close as she could conceptualize to an actual hell on earth. It was one of the last places in Kanto where Magma and Aqua were still powerful, with both gangs having huge enclaves of muscle and manpower that could make things very ugly for any Rocket unlucky enough to get put inside. And that was before you even took the Jennies and all their fucking corruption into consideration.

"You, and you," Pierce pointed, indicating Petrel and Archer, the two most junior Rockets present. "Go and get her."

"And me," Miyamoto added, though not without reservation. There was a flash of anxiety that she might never leave once she'd popped open the door and stepped fully out of the vehicle. The sight of VCMP just had that effect, she guessed, but there was also the very real conflict looming ahead that compounded the feeling.

Both faded after a few strides. It was her resolve that steeled her nerves. There had to be some squaring away here, and she needed to be the one to do it, otherwise she was always going to be playing the role of number two bitch, and she couldn't have that. She needed to make it well understood that she was in charge here.

They met the exit guard at the sheet-steel and plexiglas hut at the far end of a fenced pathway that led down the edge of the north-most yard, but only stood a fair clip off, making it clear that they were waiting, and had no intention of coming closer. He nodded at them without really realizing who they were, and all three of them raised their middle fingers in a salute that was typical of Rockets wherein law enforcement was concerned. He only scoffed, as they berated him, and showed off their flash in contempt, since he was sitting pretty behind two inches of bullet-proof laminate. Eventually, growing tired of their antics, he turned and resumed his lengthy examination of a newspaper he'd been looking over previous to their arrival.

At the sound of a loud buzzer that was audible even at this distance. three people walked from the heavy security door at the far end of the enclosed pathway. Obviously inmates from the looks of their short haircuts, and the unsightly state of clothes that had been tucked into storage for years. Two took a hasty lead, while the third slowed to a stop, fishing something out of the pockets of a white coat that was slung over her shoulder.

That was their pickup.

"Justice! Hey Justice!" Petrel yowled, casting his arm back and forth like he was directing air-traffic and looking apt to race down the length of the walkway if given half a chance. The figure off in the distance lifted her head to see who it was calling her name and then, as if simply passing an acquaintance on the street, waved in one brisk motion at headheight before retrieving the item she'd been rummaging for in her pockets. Justice must've been a nickname. She resolved to use it as well, since there was no call to be formal with someone you intended to put well in their place.

Inmates from the yard watched the trio of their peers depart with their noses and fingertips protruding through the chain-link. For some of them, this was the closest they were going to get to freedom. For others, this was their last chance to threaten or berate those departing as they were paraded across the yard like an enclosed shooting gallery.

Jeering and catcalls came from those prisoners out on the yard, and the three newly released weathered them with more or less success as the walked the open corridor. The majority of the howling and anger seemed to be for Justicia, but she seemed the least affected by their attention. She tucked into the hut a distant, almost lazy third, and weaved her way through like the guard within was a leper, neither making eye-contact nor talking to him as she did so.

Once their fellow Rocket had been rustled through the checkpoint and shoved out onto the pavement in their midst, they could see what she was holding. A pack of Numel brand cigarettes that wouldn't have seemed out of place at all but for a subtle anachronism. The packaging seemed curiously different from how it was supposed to be. It was only after Justicia put one to her lips and lit it with a few persistent flicks of a beat-up looking zippo that Miyamoto was able to place it.

The pack looked strange because it was so old the packaging had been updated since she'd bought it. Those cigarettes had been confiscated from her person on the day she was incarcerated years previously. Justicia spat out the stale smoke as much as exhaling it, and whipped the practically ancient cig to the ground in distaste. "Fuck, that's awful," she remarked.

To Miyamoto's annoyance, Petrel didn't even wait to be asked. He was already digging into his jacket to offer her one of his. Justicia took it with a slightly regretful look. It wasn't her brand. "I guess that'll work," she admitted, accepting it. She lit the coffin nail and took a long drag, eyes closed and head elevated as if in divine conference.

It was obviously something only a smoker would've understood. Having never partaken, it all seemed like ritualistic drivel to Miyamoto. Still, it said some important things. Petrel was only a social smoker at best, so there was obviously a lot of respect, maybe even idolatry, there, provided she was reading it right. Miyamoto doubted it was fear. Petrel was too thick-headed to respond to the regular beatings that _Pierce_ dished out, so she doubted Justicia fared any better at intimidating that belligerence out of him.

Miyamoto wondered how this would go, with Petrel here. She'd honestly been hoping for a more private first meeting. She decided to just watch for now.

Justicia let out a breath and then cracked a lopsided smile. Her stance loosened as she took a few more steps into the free world, and some small portion of the weight prison had mounted on her shoulders seemed to slip off. She had the look of someone who did not sleep easy, with a dark permanency to the rings beneath her eyes.

Without seeming to invest too much interest, Miyamoto tried to take a good long look at this woman.

She wasn't slight, but Justicia wasn't nearly the bruiser that Petrel's stories had made her out to be. She looked to be five-foot-four, and maybe one hundred and twenty pounds. It was hard to tell under the coat, but while she looked like she might've gotten a little use out of the yard while serving her time, she didn't seem the athletic type if only because of her smoking habit alone.

Still, Justicia seemed mostly non-threatening from where she was standing, even with the two legs of an imposing red "R" tattoo showing beneath the shirt-sleeve on her left bicep. Miyamoto stood at least four inches taller, weighed maybe fifteen or twenty pounds more, and was in as good of shape, if not better. She felt herself narrowing her eyes more and more as she went on watching Justicia finish up that cigarette.

Justicia's hair was sloppy, a typical prison chop-job, about shoulder-length, having grown some since the last cut, but not so much as to diminish it's pitiful execution. Her hair was a dull color that flirted with pink. Though Miyamoto judged her to be no older than twenty-five, it was almost certain that she'd once been a red-head, gone to gray.

Her eyes were a weathered blue and did not make her seem sharp or alert, but rather unamused and unimpressed by it all. She talked in a slightly nasal, airy way that only led her further toward the notion that Justicia was either a burnout or a lamebrain. Miyamoto smashed her lips together in silent disapproval.

"Archie?" Justicia said, after a few silent moments to herself, as if only now recognizing him. "Shit, is that you Archie?"

"Yeah, it's me." Archer admitted, bashfully,and not at all irritated by her use of his diminutive name, which he was strictly intolerant of in everyone else.

"Man, the last time I saw you, you were still a fuckin' probate, Archie. Now you're up and full blown Rocket on me!"

"Yeah-Yeah-Yeah! I'm sorry to interrupt your reunion with Bobby Big-dick over here, but seriously, what the fuck is going on?" Petrel blurted, practically shoving Archer aside. "They put your ass up for voluntary manslaughter! That's _minimum_ six years, and we get a call from the boss to come pick you up in an hour because guess what, you're getting out _today_! So, yanno, what gives?"

Justicia looked at Petrel like he was an amusing distraction, which was different from how everyone else seemed to, because she didn't seem to be loading up a punch while she did it. " "Parole, Pet. They're letting me out early for good behavior. Forty-two months to the day."

"Shee-it. Now I've heard everything. Good behavior? You?" Petrel asked, before blowing out a raspberry.

"Yeah. Didn't anyone tell you?" Justicia slapped both hands together palm to palm in front of her chest, one finger arched to hold her cigarette, before continuing in a falsetto. "_I found Arceus and I was saved by his divine Judgment._" She followed up the display with a roll of her eyes, and a long drag.

"Now I really have heard everything! But hey, I got something for that. It's called cheap booze, and meaningless sex. I won't tell the chaplain if you wont."

Justicia snorted, driving smoke out of her nostrils into Petrel's face. "I'll take the booze. Big pass on the meaningless sex, Pet."

Petrel didn't even notice the dismissal. "Alright, alright. You drive a hard bargain. I'll do my best to make the sex as meaningful as possible, but you gotta understand, I'm a free spirit, Justice. I just can't tie down all this goodness at one Ponyta-hitch, okay? I go where the wind takes me."

Miyamoto found herself fuming a bit at Petrel's obvious propositioning, but locked that down before it crept into her expression.

Archer, still feeling the sting from the Petrel's comments in the car, took his opportunity to interject and snorted. "Yeah, if the wind takes you well clear of all the gash you've ever made a pass at, I agree."

Justicia chuckled mildly at the assertion, and waved away both of the male members of her welcoming party, to finally lay eyes on Miyamoto, whom she'd previously failed to notice at all-a purposeful oversight, Miyamoto was sure.

She looked speculative at first, glancing up and down from Miyamoto's red-laced heavy boots to the very peak of her stark white jacket and jet black mock-neck, but did not allow herself to show more than vague interest in the face above it. Instead, she gave it a questioning look. Not a _"Who are you?"_ but instead more of a _"What is this?"_

Justicia grunted in the same way she had with Archer and Pet. "You're _the favorite_, aren't you?"

They called Miyamoto that because she was. There wasn't even any point in arguing it anymore. The Madame Boss had even reprimanded her own son for not being more like Miyamoto, calling her "_The Ideal Image of Team Rocket."_

She jutted her chin. "I must be, if you've already heard about me."

Justicia frowned a bit, as if in appraisal. Miyamoto opened her mouth to address the unspoken issue at hand with suitable bravado, but Petrel, who leapt in to diffuse the situation without invitation, stuck out his thumb toward the woman behind him. "Miyamoto's a Viridian Regular now."

Somehow Miyamoto got the impression that he was just trying to clarify, not insult her intentions, but that hardly made the offhanded comment any less crass to her hearing off it. Still, as much as she wanted to choke him, she couldn't. If she made it seem as though that assertion were not correct, and that she was in fact, something more than just "one of the crew", she would seem vain, or worse, insecure. She bit the inside of one cheek, and exhaled slowly.

Unlike her, Justicia did not simply let the matter drop. "We'll see," she said with a shrug, drilling in an obvious dig. Justicia made severe and lasting eye-contact with the other Rocket Agent, eyes glinting, before she allowed herself to be directed back to the car. For her part, Miyamoto was left standing there, wondering if the confrontation could've ended more poorly.

She set her teeth together behind closed lips and followed behind at a moderate distance. _Best not to react now,_ she reminded herself. _Save it for a better time._

Somebody was about to be thrown out of the car to make room for Justicia, she realized, as they returned to the lot, and it had nearly been decided that Archer, as the most junior, would be the one surrender his spot. Miyamoto weighed being ousted from the car against the discomfort of spending a whole car ride with this new, unprecedented problem and considered offering Archer her own spot. In the end, she just offered to accompany him. "C'mon, Archer," she said, giving his sleeve a pull. "I'll ride with you."

Archer nodded, and they watched the black sedan full of friends and rivals putter off down the dusty road without comment. Archer called for the taxi, since that was his place as her junior. She'd paid him the respect of not forcing him to go alone, and so it was the least he could do to handle the mundane details that most Rocket agents of her stature would have regarded as infra dignitatem.

Brotherhood and Respect were core principles of Team Rocket, and so she supposed that this event hadn't been a total loss. Archer respected Justicia, that much was obvious, but if she, like the rest of the Viridian regulars continued to treat him as what he was, all the better. She would continue to show a more reserved contempt for his junior status than her peers, which to him would seem like love by comparison. Archer, naturally, would grow closer to her because of it.

They were both relative newcomers to the Viridian Chapter, the mother chapter of Team Rocket, but both of them were well-connected, and in Archer's case, possessed of potential that had not yet been tapped. It was good to have strong rapport with someone like that.

Archer smiled at her, obviously alluding to the brush-off that Justicia had given her when he asked if she was "All good?"

She didn't nod, but only popped her eyebrows as if she didn't understand what he was driving at. She had resolved to bring Archer in close, but she wasn't about to wear her heart on her sleeve. "I'm _always_ good."

Archer's smile faded, but he saved face to some extent by nodding affirmatively. "Yeah."

Miyamoto smirked. "How about you, Archer? Are the Regulars everything you expected?"

Archer betrayed a small frown, but gave the answer she'd have expected to hear of Ariana's young protegé. "It doesn't matter. This opportunity is for the team, not for me." Archer was young, and he still had that team creed pumping in his heart, so that answer didn't surprise her at all.

Miyamoto grinned, seeing it for the canned response that it was, though. "It'll get easier."

Archer nodded, but stuck to his guns. "I can handle it."

"Even Petrel?"

Archer turned away from her, watching down the street as if waiting for the cab to appear already, but not fast enough to completely hide the expression of distaste. "Especially Petrel."

* * *

A/N: Having fun yet?


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Pokemon.

**A/N: **Darkness, Jealousy and Adult situations! Oh my!

* * *

**Blood In, Blood Out**

**Chapter 4**

_"Like Animals"_

There was a welcoming party going on at HQ when they returned. The structure had once been a nightclub during the booming days before recession had hit Viridian, and it still looked a lot like that on the inside, even though now it had been mostly sectioned off into rooms and offices, and the nightlife in Viridian had withered and died, leaving behind no need for such a place. Still, all of the furniture in the massive central foyer had been shoved out to the darkly-colored walls, to make room for a large table and assortment of chairs that in no way matched one another.

The Regulars lined it on all sides, and even a few members from Vermillion and Olivine stood between them or sat further away. She even recognized the two agents that had been put in charge of the Game Corner, a casino front for the team expansion in Celadon. Atilla and Hun. The _Profit Expansion Division_, they called themselves, which was maybe a little pretentious, but they were good at their jobs in spite of their almost laughable relative youth.

Zager, who'd once been called Crazy Zager for his radical money-making ideas, stood near the head of the table. The reason nobody called him Crazy anymore was because the man was now a major force behind the team's largest legitimate front, a tech startup in Saffron called Silph Research and Development. His thick black moustache twitched as he carried on an unheard conversation with the individual to his left, the prodigal son, Giovanni.

Miyamoto had never cared for Giovanni, truth be told. He thought he was too big for the status quo of the Team. He thought that the Team needed new direction, and he was the one to give it, with his big fancy Pokemon U degree. He didn't understand that the team would never condescend to follow some college boy who'd never gotten his own hands dirty in his life.

She hid her frown. At least Giovanni being here meant that the Madame Boss wouldn't be, and for that she was thankful. Miyamoto wasn't sure she could deal with that additional layer of pressure just yet.

Mother and son had grown to detest one another in the worst of ways, since Giovanni had returned from his studies abroad and while everyone owed allegiance to the Madame Boss, somehow they all managed to dance the delicate dance required to show them both the proper respect and not take a side in the obvious infeud. Perhaps it was even some effort on their part that made it all come together, as they seemed to make their offset appearances in uncanny synchronicity.

Giovanni seemed quite at ease around Justicia, who sat at the head of the table, it's occupant of honor. That did distress Miyamoto a bit, but that hardly represented a disturbing revelation. There was more than enough contempt shared between Giovanni and herself, largely because she was so far into the Madame Boss' camp, so she assumed there must be those on the other side of the situation.

Ariana was there too, standing in close confidence with Archer. If there was any camaraderie built between them by last night's storytelling, the Admin did not show it. She didn't so much as nod at Miyamoto when they made eye-contact over Archer's shoulder.

She sat herself at the table, boldly close to Justicia and opposite of Petrel. She knew that there was no sense in avoiding Justicia or this homecoming party, since it would just make her look like she was jealous and weak. Instead, she took up a drink and a smile, and wedged herself into the conversations around her either by charisma or by force.

She listened to Petrel talk about all the girls he'd fucked, and the cash he'd folded, which was a conversation that went on for hours, it seemed. There was no substance to it, really, at least not as far as she could tell, but they all kept on listening, simply because he sold it with the gift of gab.

She listened to Tyson talk about all the fights he'd won, and lost, and emerged from with barely his life. He pointed to scars, some new, that Justicia was only now learning of, and some old, which he and Justicia recanted together, with something like nostalgic fondness.

She listened to Archer talk about overseas venture markets that were ripe for investment, and how the domestic government was making a grave error so tightly controlling the importation of pokemon-related goods. His was the least engaging of the conversation, but Miyamoto made an effort to seem interested, all the same.

Pierce, like her, only listened. He was a firm believer in the opportunistic nature of a well-placed silence. He heard, but he pretended not to hear until he was spoken to.

Justicia, who didn't tell much of her stay in VCMP, drank heavily. Doubly so, whenever the conversation strayed in that direction.

In fact that was the one constant for all of them. For hours, they kept pouring back drinks, and for those of them who were so inclined the imbibing turned to harsher things: pills smashed under the thick bases of lowball glasses, lines of white snorted off of the bare table. The mood grew somehow heavier, more dense as the ride-in guests, and even local well-wishers including Giovanni and Ariana made their gradual yet inevitable exits, and all that remained were the Regulars.

And still, the drinking went on, for hours more. Tidal waves of amber and astringent clear liquor gushing down wide-open and abused throats to the cavernous stomachs below, already awash with the stuff. The clock spun on, unnoticed as it seeped into their bloodstreams and did it's devastating work.

A more lucid state of inebriation found Miyamoto in the midst of it all, and she took rapid inventory, sitting upright as best she could, as if waking from a daydream. She felt groggy and not at all herself.

Pierce, one hand splayed across the side of his head, slowly worked a pocket lighter over and over and over on it's edge against the table, cigarette dangling limply from his bottom lip as he kept on listening and saying nothing.

Archer, long since passed out, reclined deeply in a folding chair, legs propped into another vacant chair beside him, face ablush from consumption.

Tyson, his huge and gruff personality peeled away, warbled at Justicia, voice choked with emotion. "I really missed you! I thought the regulars would fall apart without you!" he moaned, mostly ignored by everyone around him, as most alcoholic lapses of integrity are, either out of shame or disgust.

Petrel was in his element, still doling out stories that got ruder and cruder as he went on. "-And so I told her, darling, your pussy might look like an open-faced jam sandwich with whiskers, but you've got the best damn looking hemorrhoids I've ever seen."

Miyamoto groaned, just like everyone else at the table who was still cognizant enough to hear the disgusting anecdote.

"You're a fucking animal, Pet," Justicia commented in a way that was mostly uncomplimentary. She, perhaps more than any of them was cognizant and alert, and it was not because she'd taken in any less than the rest of them.

Miyamoto had been careful to match her swallow for swallow, but even beyond that Justicia had been weathering the same nose-blizzard as Petrel, and mashing the same downers into her drink as Pierce who sat at the end of the table, head as heavy as all the injustice in the world. Maybe it was the cocktail formed by all those things that had her looking so balanced.

Petrel, eager and edgy as he was, smiled at the words he believed to be praise, and blathered on. What little reservations he had were demolished by the stimulant and depressant buzz.

"I could show you how much of an animal I am," he offered, the most recent in a string of come ons that he'd produced to Miyamoto's ever-increasing dismay. A dismay that she was getting worse and worse at hiding, and that Justicia had surely begun to notice.

Justicia _had_ noticed.

The party's guest of honor swallowed out a mouthful of vodka and hydrocodone that tasted worse than mouthwash, and had only the sole virtue of getting her extremely fucked up to make up for that. She'd been sitting through Petrel's asinine shit for a while now, if only for the sake of driving a point across, and it was time to drop the other shoe already. "Alright, fine, you little pussy. Let's do it. Let's fuck. You and me. Right now," she contested, shoving her glass aside and turning to face the disgusting shithead face-front.

Petrel's eyes grew wide for a moment, but then he smirked, smooth confidence flattening it all out into simple amusement. "Alright-"

"But first, I want you to take your dick out right here in front of everyone. If you're such a fucking man, then lets see it, here in the open, Pet." Justicia said, setting her finger on the table.

This was when the facade broke, and everything about what was happening took on an eerie quality, like it was part of some stage rehearsal, where the characters were not in costume, but their lines were delivered with the utmost of sincerity, and Petrel, the lead player of this vignette, tried to consult his script to no avail.

"W-what?"

"You heard me. I didn't fucking stutter." Justicia assured him, stare boring holes in Petrel as he backpedaled, eyes flashing to someone who might bail him out. Miyamoto caught that pleading, bewildered look for just a second, before the tyrant at the head of the table stole it again.

"No, don't look at _her_." Justicia barked. "_I'm_ the one who's gonna fuck you. Take that dick out, Petrel."

There were many long, sour seconds of silence before Petrel, manhood in question sucked in a measure of courage and oxygen, and did as pride demanded he do. He unzipped his pants, and fished about within, before producing the appendage in question. He straightened, trying not to let the offering seem modest in light of the circumstances.

Justicia made no outward indication of whether not it was. Instead she polished off her drink, and slammed it down so hard that Archer woke with a start. A type of alchemy seemed to have taken place finally, as all the drink in the woman's gut finally peeled away the personable exterior, revealing the person that lurked within to Miyamoto's sight at long last.

Justicia's voice lost it's humored, airy quality, becoming a low growl. "All of you, get the fuck out." She said clearly and forcefully. "Now."

Miyamoto couldn't have said what propelled her outward with the others. Tyson started corralling Archer along, and Pierce began lanking and loping slowly behind, but there was a swirling sense of disgust and betrayal that was both enhanced and stifled by her drunkenness that got her on her own feet.

She found that she could do nothing, as she left the room, offer no protest nor complaint, because to do so, she would admit that she was having something taken from her, or that she objected. She wouldn't do that. She left, seeming as light as air, but inside she was screaming.

Petrel and Justicia stood alone in the room after it was vacant, her weathering his lascivious pawing only so far. She'd taken off her flash when she'd come in, and he unbuttoned her short-sleeve black blouse with urgency, swooping in to suckle at her neck and shoulders as though she were some punch-drunk highschool girl who'd spread her legs willing and wet for him, or else a whore who would let him believe that was the case for the right price.

She did not turn her head aside invitingly. She did not press herself against him. She didn't stop him, either, but she was not his lover.

He groaned against the crux of her neck. "I always had the biggest fucking wood for you, Justice. Ever since I joined the Regulars."

She took a drink and a drag over his shoulder as he fondled her through her penal-issue brassiere, "I thought you wanted to fuck, not tell me about your feelings."

He seemed not to care for the rebuff, but instead redoubled his efforts, peeling away her clothing and going straight for what he was after, as promised. Even with her pants bunched around her ankles, Justicia's entrance resisted him in the way the rails of an old window swell to fit their jambs. Almost four sexless years had taken it's toll on her.

Still, she snickered at his attempts to pierce his way in, adjusting his hips awkwardly, changing his angle of attack manually, even going so far as to spit on his hand and diddle around like a porn-star, to no avail. It had gone over a minute now, and she could see he was beginning to wither.

"Been a long time, huh?" Petrel offered, as though offering guidance concerning the problem.

She puffed the last few millimeters of tobacco before the filter on her cigarette, and blew a hot jet of smoke in his face. "You're not really doing much to get me wet."

In a huff, he stepped back. "Well, what would help?!

She sneered, as if she'd only been waiting to ask, and Ashed out her cigarette on the bare wood of the table before reaching for his spittle covered hand. She cupped it, and curled his fingers over, pressing the tips into his palm. With great diligence, she tucked his thumb over the assemblage so that he was making a tight fist. When she was done, she peeled off her shirt the rest of the way, and nodded, as if she were prepared.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Petrel asked, fully confounded. He held his hand up, as if he were interrogating it. "There's no way this is going to fi-"

She shook her head, and made an aggravated sound. "No, you're not doing it right. Curl it up tight. Bring it back about to here." She showed him what she meant, bringing her own fist back to waist level. "Like this."

Confused, he mimicked her motion. She snarled with satisfaction when he'd done it correctly. "Now punch me in the stomach."

"W-what?" Petrel warbled in confusion

Justicia sighed. "I said, ball your fucking fist up, and punch me with it. Right in the gut." She set her hands fingertip to fingertip in a circle above her lower abdomen, as if drawing a target. "C'mon you little bitch. Right here. Like you mean it."

"I-I can't, Justice, I-"

"Don't pussy out, now, Petrel. This is the only chance you're ever gonna get."

"I don't think-"

"See, this is why I don't believe any of those bullshit stories. You'd have to have some fucking balls first. Are you gonna fucking hit me, or do I have to tell everyone that you were too big of a bitch to fuck me when I was the one asking for it?"

His first punch was timid, slow, backed only by his fear and irritation with her threats and insults. It was scarcely a punch at all, and she told him so. "Oh come the fuck on, faggot. Either punch me or walk away. Don't bullshit around-"

The second one was stiffer, more angry, and caught her between exhale and inhale. Her diagphragm bounced upward, forcing the last part of her sentence out as a loud "Uhnf!"

Recovering, she smiled wickedly. "That's close. You still hit like a highschool girl, though."

He hit her again, and this time she braced for it. He'd leaned into the blow, and she was sitting on the edge of the table, leaving nowhere for the energy to dissipate to. Dispite her preparation, she doubled over, spit flying from her mouth.

Without a missed beat, Justicia sprang upright again, eyes gleaming. She wiped her hair back out of her face. "That's it? Come on. Archie could punch me harder than that. Do I need to call him in here so he can show you how-"

She hollered in pain when the next punch came in high, under her ribs, much more sharply than before. A cluster of nerves leaked fire under her skin in all directions but as soon as she could gulp in enough air, she prodded him onward. "Harder! Fuck, this is getting me so wet."

To demonstrate the truth of her statement, she reached down between her legs, and withdrew two glistening fingers, wiping them across his snarling lips. "Too bad I'm starting to have second thoughts about fucking a limp-wristed little queer like you."

His next blow, misaimed, cracked against her hip and sent a numbness down to her knee. Her groan was a mixture of pain and elation. "That's it. Keep going until I fucking cry. I get so damn horny when guys beat the shit out of me. Too bad there aren't any _around_."

He gave her a combination, left-right-left, each punch dead center on her navel, where a swollen bruise was beginning to form. Involuntary tears did well in her eyes, but she kept at him. She lifted her hands from where they'd braced her weight against the tabletop, and put them on Petrel's shoulders. He ankles hooked behind his knees, her touch desirous.

"Oh, shit," Justicia gasped, as if she were already on the verge of orgasm. "One more. All I need is one more, and I'm there," she pleaded.

One more was all she needed, but she didn't need it to be fully welcoming, as Petrel might've hoped. Her grip on him wasn't to ease their copulation either, but more to ensure he could not wrench free.

When his fist pushed into Justicia's stomach, up came everything contained therein. Hot and roiling, the vomit seemed to explode from her throat like a geyser, splattering against his neck, and his chest. Every drink she'd drank, every pill she'd swallowed, even the last meal she'd been served in prison, all thinned down to a milky off-yellow soup that reeked of ethanol and bile. It trickled down in runny globules until it dripped from the tip of his cock like thickened piss.

His erection sharply curbed, Petrel was beginning to look like he was packing an over-boiled link of _boudin _rather than the hard salami he'd been boasting of earlier in the night.

Not quite finished yet, Justicia guffawed and kicked him hard in the sopping groin with both legs as he recoiled. The blow was hard enough to lift him off the floor, and she was already mocking his sharp gasp of pain by the time he fell into the chair he'd occupied previously, cupping his ball-sack like a pair of busted eggs. " Aw, what's the matter, you don't like the rough stuff?"

She collected her brassiere, and hoisted her pants back up in a brisk motion, before setting to work on buttoning back up her blouse. When she was done Petrel was still moaning, his eyes just now beginning to crack open against the pain. He gave her a plaintive look, and she shrugged. "If you can still get hard after that I'll swear I'll suck your cock until my face turns white, puke-dick and all."

The chastened Rocket whimpered miserably.

"No? What a shame." She wiped her mouth and chin with one hand, and rubbed that on a clean expanse of Petrel's jacket. When she was done, she crouched down beside him, with a merciless glare. Her voice became low and hard again, and all hint of humor evaporated.

"I don't ever even want to hear you _imply_ that you were man enough to fuck me. You really don't want to know how deep this Bunneary hole goes, Pet. Anyone asks about what happened in here, you tell them nothing." Justicia coached him, without blinking. "We had a discussion, and after you had a change of heart we came to a new and complete understanding. Am I being clear?"

Petrel nodded rapidly.

She nodded as well, as if to agree that they were finished, but then suddenly Justicia grabbed him by a handful of his hair, and pulled his head sideways to speak directly into his face. "And I'm only going to fucking tell you this once, so listen to me when I say this: You are out of line. I don't know why none of the guys ever kicked your ass back into shape, but I am here now, and I promise that you will straighten your shit out and start acting like a professional or you and I will have an altercation that will make you _wish_ this was the worst thing that I had ever done you."

She stood straight, and waved him off. "Now get your sorry ass out of here and clean yourself up." Justicia let him crawl away and sat back down at her seat. That was two flying-types with one stone, as the saying went, which certainly made for an efficient first day home.

Still, she reasoned, hefting a half-full fifth of whiskey from the table and putting it to her lips, she had a lot of drinking to make up for, and not a whole lot of night left to do it in.

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**A/N: **It's messed up how much fun I'm having with this.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Pokemon.

**A/N: **Finally we start to break into some of the content that harkens to the TRio's odd ways of tackling problems, and perhaps some indication of how much of that was actually inherited from Jessie's mother... If that makes sense. Anyways, enjoy!

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**Blood In, Blood Out**

**Chapter 5**

_"A Plan in Motion"_

Miyamoto's anger was like the molten core of the earth, as she stood outside. She felt as though she might bake a portion of the concrete that surrounded her feet by force of presence alone, but the Rocket showed nothing in her face. She'd once had a notorious streak of hot-headedness, but Miyamoto had learned as a child of Castelia to bottle her fury, and avoid the beatings that loud-mouths got from those that were bigger and stronger than them, so it was hardly a feat of willpower that kept her looking so placid. Rather, it was almost second nature at this point of her adult life.

She nodded subtly to Tyson in farewell, while she wrestled with that solar rage at the same time, punching it, smashing it down like she were packing overmuch luggage, to stowing it away. When it was fully contained, she walked home, still managing to leave the clubhouse long before Petrel came creeping out of the same door, clutching a bag of ice to his groin and hoping desperately that Pierce was still around to give him a ride home, so that he wouldn't have to take his sportbike.

Home for Miyamoto was an upscale, but mostly unfurnished condominium on the eighteenth floor of high-rise complex, some fifteen blocks away. The walk helped to sober her up some. The doorman was sharply dressed and courteous to her as he always, when she stepped into the entryway. She boarded the austere aluminum elevator, and marched down the maroon-carpeted hallway to her door. Her's was heavy aluminum-backed teak, last on the left and picked solely for it's name: 18R.

When she got inside, latched an ensemble of locks behind her and stomped off her heavy boots, she did not go to sleep, or sit and consider her day, or fume about her situation. Instead, she went into her kitchen, where all the appliances save one had sat untouched since she'd taken over the lease, and put on a pot of coffee.

It was time to work.

She stood against the sink in the kitchenette, arms folded until then coffee was done, then she took a seat at her desk, which sat in the middle of an otherwise empty and undecorated living space. From it, she produced a tablet of paper and some pencils, a sewing kit, a measuring tape and several swatches. She spread them out in front of her until she found some that seemed appropriate, and then began a rough sketch after scraping the remainder of the cloth back into a shallow, open drawer.

For this, she would need a disguise. Wearing disguises was not something that Rockets seemed to do, being that they were so proud of their _flash and colors_, which was nomenclature for the white regalia and red letters they all wore to denote gang membership. Miyamoto had a flourish for it, however.

It was latent talent that had followed her from her days as a gutter-baroness in Castelia. There wasn't much charity to go around in the streets of Unova's Capital city, and people fought for every scrap of it, so what better way to get more than her fair share? It was easier living three slightly miserable lives than one incredibly miserable one.

Of course, there had been those that had copped wise, eventually, but they got the sharp end of a short knife in their backs. That too, was something that had followed her, as Justicia would find out soon enough.

She stood to measure herself, starting at the shoulders and ending at the thigh, noting the results as she went. The leg measurement was less crucial, as she could always cut and hemn later and in truth she knew the results she would get anyway. A good disguise was in the visible details, however, and a little meticulousness went a long way.

She had enough material to begin most of the garments she would require tonight, but some of the accoutrement would need to be purchased or collected. She began on a long, black jacket with buttons of gray plastic that she fished from another drawer filled with little sub-dividers. Her cuts were neat and precise, and she fastidiously collected the unused portions and loose thread for later use. Miyamoto sewed by hand in the same way she had learned without any assistance from a machine. She was fast enough without it, and she didn't see the need to complicate her process with a hulking device that would otherwise arrest a portion of her workspace.

She didn't move for hours, except to nimbly push and sharply pull at the needle and thread. It was only when she turned the garment inside out to conceal the ugly chartreuse-colored brocade fabric lining and examine it, that she realized how much time had elapsed. Nearly the whole night had gone by, with the morning sun shearing through the slat blinds on the window, sub-sectioning the room with razor-thin bars of pale blue.

She strode to her bedroom and hung the jacket in her closet, without trying it's fit. The walk-in was the only reasonably occupied space in her home. She kept it well-stocked with the sort of flexible ensembles that allowed her to exercise her craft, but also, she did not deny herself the small luxuries and vanities that a well-paid woman like herself could enjoy. A jewelry box stuffed with items, some pilfered, but most purchased sat over a shoe organizer that was stuffed three sets to a shelf at the far end of the closet.

Smiling, she slipped out of her clothes and stretched, but not in preparation of sleep. Instead, she pulled a few articles of clothing out of the closet and flung them onto the well-made bed, and took a shower, in the adjoining bathroom.

When she was clean and refreshed, she slipped into casual clothes, and left her apartment to begin the day, which started with a call. She kept no phone, and was always careful to walk a fair piece from her building before stopping at a payphone.

"Tyson," she said into it, after it rang ten times, and a weak voice hissed it's disbelieving hello across the line. "Breakfast?"

There were a number of expletives which followed the request.

"Hungover?" Miyamoto scoffed. "Gimme Archer's number then."

Her second call was more fruitful, but it was only because she forced it to be. "Archer," she began, this time more forcefully, "where are you?"

He made the mistake of telling her in a whisper that sounded every bit as trashed as Tysons, and twice as pitiful by comparison. She hung up the phone on him, and was at the Noctowl Motel in 15 minutes, and pounding on his door. He came to the door in his jacket and boxer-briefs, barechested and pantsless. "What is it?"

Without a word, she pushed past him, and looked around, as if she were searching for something incriminating.

He moaned. "Arceus, Miyamoto, what are you doing?"

She chuckled. Honestly she'd been hoping to catch Ariana draped sweaty and breathless across the rented bedsheets like a well-used hooker, but alas, his room was empty, save him and a television silently pumping softcore pornographic cinema into the dead space between beige papered accent-walls.

She spun in place, pretending he'd only just now appeared, "Can you blame me for wanting to see if the rumors were true?" she remarked, voice thick with sarcasm, of which she felt none. She knew good and well Archer was bagging that old bitch, but it was her little secret to hold on to, for when the time was right.

Archer, as expected, frowned, but she snagged his pants by the leg, and slung them at him from where he'd left them tossed over the arm of a nearby chair. They hit him across his face, and he groaned again, clutching his head.

"Get dressed so we can have breakfast," Miyamoto insisted. "C'mon, it'll help your hangover."

"The only thing that is going to help this hangover is a lobotomy," Archer insisted, though he did as she requested, with only moderate complaint.

They took breakfast at a nearby truck-stop, which Archer evidently had become quite familiar with during his tenancy at the seedy hotel. The younger Rocket, for his part, ordered a plate of home fries and a glass of orange juice with toast, loading up on the carbohydrates, at Miyamoto's direction, while Miyamoto herself ordered extensively from the a-la-carte section of the menu until she was satisfied.

While Archer politely ate his breakfast, chewing slowly behind a bunched napkin, with all the mastered niceties of a true upper-class Viridianite, she mashed her eggs-over-easy under the tines of her fork until they were slivers of oily white in a soppy yolk soup, then attacked the messy substance with the half-moon remainders of her cornmeal mush, once she'd bitten the tender centers out.

It was an overwhelming display, she imagined. Kantonese women were typically expected to be delicate and reserved in their appetites, as she understood it, but she didn't come from a place where a chance at a meal sat still long enough for a person to set out eight different utensils and tuck a napkin into their collar. She smirked with greasy lips, after folding a slice of bacon into her mouth like an accordion.

"So," she began, without a real preamble around the mouthful of fried pork-fat. "Can I ask you something?"

Archer blew out a long sigh, and then set his fingers on the edge of the table. "For the last time, _no_, I didn't get sexed in to the Team. I paid my dues just the same as everybody-"

Miyamoto snickered, taking a huge gulp of milk to wash back her meal. "Not about that," she explained. "Honestly Archer, I don't give a damn if you took a dump in the perfect shape of an R when you were a baby, and Ariana knew you were the next Rocket fucking Messiah. You're in the Team _now_, and that's all that matters."

His demeanor softened, and Miyamoto had to wonder why Archer hadn't been her first choice.

She had called Tyson first because she had dirt on him that she could use for leverage. It was nothing severe, of course. Tyson was a Rocket through and through, but he had his share of indiscretion that she'd found out about through various conversations since coming to Viridian. They wouldn't get him into any serious trouble, but she was certain he didn't want word of them spread around if he could help it.

Archer, however, she could maneuver without needing to coerce. He was young and impressionable, and she'd shown him far more consideration than the other's had. He would fit perfectly into her plans and she wouldn't even need to destroy the rapport she'd built. If anything, she might even increase it.

"Will you tell me about what it was like when you were a Grunt?" She asked, genuinely inquisitive, pounding down the last half of her drink.

All Rockets began their careers in a probationary period where they were known as Grunts. During this time they were essentially the lowest common denominator. No more than slaves and servants to whatever whim or request that those who'd claimed the right to wear the flash and color placed upon them. They didn't speak unless spoken to, and their opinions meant less than shit. They were, in all measurable capacities, exactly what they were called.

Of course, just what this term of indentured servitude actually meant depended on who selected you for introduction. Your sponsor was the one who put your name forward for probationary membership, and that made a huge difference in the nature of your assignments as a Grunt.

Ariana, a high-ranking admin, who'd once had a history of being the Madame Boss' own enforcer and liaison, now spent her days entangled in the money-making ventures of the Team's legitimate fronts, so it made sense that Archer's tasks would be more facilitative of those sorts of needs than her own had been. Archer had spent a long three years minding files and phones, making calls and setting up meetings instead of cutting deals and taking the fight to rival Teams out here on the streets like the rest of them. It made sense that Ariana had withheld his full membership for so long.

On the other hand, Miyamoto had been sponsored by the Madame Boss herself, and her own duties as a Grunt had been bloody and rapid, spanning only five months from the occasion of her sponsorship to the day she'd enjoyed full membership. The tasks she had been set to were honestly not all that different from the sort of thing she did now, save for the fact that she was allowed to enjoy the bit of status that came with them.

Miyamoto didn't talk about her life as a Grunt, as was typical of most Rockets, but she wondered if Archer would talk about his.

It was a very ritualistic thing, the transition from Grunt to Agent. Like pupae into imago, the Rocket that emerged from their probationary periods were so unlike what they had been before, that they often saw need to distance themselves from that time, not just temporaneously, but physically and spiritually as well. For this reason, many Rockets, like herself, set fire to their old Blacks, the so-called Grunt probationary uniforms that were named for the sable silhouette they gave their wearers, on the day they were given their flash and color.

There was even something of a legend within the Team, that in days of old, before the Madame Boss had taken over, probates had been required to eat their old clothing, down to the last stitch and button, and were not considered full Rockets until they had found a way to do so to the satisfaction of their sponsor.

The younger agent only shrugged his shoulders. "Not much to tell. I handled a lot of the bookkeeping for the Celadon expansion. Some stuff for this tech company they're trying to start in Saffron, too. I'd have probably done another year as a probate if the Pallet expansion had taken off, so..." His voice tapered off when he realized who in particular he was talking to, but he finished up with a sort of off-smile, and tilted his head to one side. "Why do you ask?"

It was research of a type, really. She wasn't sure how much of it to let Archer in on just yet, but there was no harm in being frank. "You ever drive anyone around? For the boss, I mean."

"Well, yeah, sure. Lots of times. Drove that big armored land-yacht for about a year, actually."

Miyamoto smiled, genuinely. "What was that like?"

And so she sat and listened for a good long while, at some of the tales Archer had to tell. They were mostly uninteresting affairs, but she gleaned from them the important parts. She listened to the hows and the whys and the whens, and she filed them away in her mental rolodex for later assembly.

When Archer was done, she knew everything there was to know about how a Grunt would be expected to behave when he drove around his betters. She knew how and when to open and close a door for a passenger and when it was best to stay at or below the speed limit for the sake of going unmolested by the road authority. She knew what sort of things to say to someone who had requested a pickup, and she knew what sort of things to say to someone who the Boss had requested be _picked up _as well as the very severe difference between the two.

When they parted ways, and Archer paid for the meal, as was his place in things, Miyamoto sat back in the booth and extrapolated upon what she'd learned. By her best estimate it would take her three more days of work to put everything into place. At least two more nights of sewing and cutting, and perhaps one more meeting with Archer, wherein she would ask for a favor that would help cure the glue that held this plan together. It was not essential, but beneficial enough that it merited the extra time. That particular meeting couldn't happen too soon, of course, or even Archer would begin to wonder what exactly she was up to. He was naive, but not a moron.

Three more days and her plan would be complete. Three more days and then she would get Justicia separate from the rest of the Regulars and make it quite clear why she was the one in charge here. Three more days and that one would fall in line, well chastised, just as Miyamoto had promised.

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**A/N: **Alright guys, I prolly better get back to work on PKMN2K10. From here on I'll probably update on a semi-regular rotation with my main fic. Hopefully I've wet enough whistles to keep the desire for new material alive. My aim is to have these two fics sortof synergize off one another, with certain revelations in one leading to a new understanding of plot elements in the other, even though they won't directly connect in the sense of their time-lines. Thanks for reading!


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